Another Blog Post about Content Marketing

Fact: Content marketing is the new darling of social business and has dominated the conversation over the last few years. The numbers speak for themselves. There were roughly 50,000 blog posts and over 100,000 tweets just on content strategy in the last year alone.

When we published our first ebook in 2011 on Content Supply Chain, the new content marketing model was very early in its maturation and understanding.

· Experts, thought leaders and agencies were busy redefining it and its relationship with social.

· Only a small percentage wrote about content as a holistic process and it was too early for measurable results of a successful program.

· The hottest topic was the notion of Brands as Publishers.

· The biggest pain points were related to traditional publishing demands and the ability to create amazing and disruptive content.

Fast forward to today.

· Though it is still nascent, content marketing has matured and the level of sophistication has risen as brands (particularly large enterprise) sort through the complexities.

· The conversation is less theoretical and more experience-based. And there are lessons learned thanks to early adopters such as SAP, Coca-Cola and Intel.

· Content on content has become more holistic and process-based as companies begin to operationalize internally.

· It is still a long road to ROI, but there are some common value metrics.

· We’ve gone from Brands AS Publishers to Brands ARE Publishers.

· In addition to content creation, the biggest pain points are related to organizational silos and governance issues and roles.

As my colleague Kathy Baughman explained in her latest blog post, this month we are releasing a companion piece to our ebook, The Alchemy of Content: A Formula for Overcoming 4 Major Content Pain Points, to help marketers sort through this brave new world. Hopefully it will serve as a useful tool for marketers and content strategists. Stay tuned!